Behold, the beautiful leaves of this Rex Begonia I bought last winter. It’s flowering! The trick to growing this particular begonia is shade and humidity. My time hiking through forests in Dominica really drove that point home in a clear way. I often found begonias growing in surprisingly dim spots underneath thick tree canopy and …
From the moment I first laid eyes on an Oxalis palmifrons I knew I wanted to take a picture of it with a tiny model train figure standing underneath the leaves as if she/he was a tourist posing among a bank of palm trees. This photo isn’t quite what I had in mind.
Our new place has a cold, south-facing, window-filled mudroom. It was the porch at one time and still has the original stone window-ledge, window, brick facade, concrete floor, and functional doorbell. It’s not a very functional living space, but it makes a perfect cold greenhouse! Since before the move, my poor plants have been suffering …
First there was a fat lump of a thing found in the Yardshare Garden here in the west end while planting squashes. And then a few weeks ago we found Leopard Slugs (Limax maximus) in our friend David’s plot at the Leslie Street Allotment Garden on the east side of Toronto. Prior to these two …
A few days ago we packed up the old place, packed up the roof garden and all of my plants, and moved. It was hell. A special thanks to friends who helped us get the remaining vestiges of our stuff out. That was no small feat and I am super, super grateful. As of right …
About a month ago we looked at a house with a yard and about 10 minutes after the viewing I tweeted that this was the next place I wanted to live. I could envision our life there and it looked rather nice. We didn’t get the house. Or that yard. That yard. Yard…. Sweet, sweet …
When it comes to dealing with an end of season garden glut I have one rule: everything roasted. I am yet to find a vegetable or fruit that doesn’t benefit from this treatment. I thought I’d tried it all and there were no more surprises left. I was wrong. Last weekend I pulled out almost …
Perhaps it is because I have a penchant for the weird and the unusual, or maybe it’s because I just think it’s pretty, but I seem to have a strong affinity for variegated plants. It doesn’t matter what it is, if there is a variegated version, I must have it. Well, that’s not entirely true. …
Thanksgiving weekend has just passed in Canada, and even though I’m not big on the holiday, the one thing I do demand is a homemade pumpkin pie. Fortunately, we made a pumpkin this year. Accidentally. Here’s how it happened. Back in the late spring, a friend gave us some unmarked transplants for the Yardshare Garden. …
I was introduced to this “potato that grows above the ground” on an organic farm tour in Dominica. It was one of the plants we were most excited about, but because we only got the Patois name (and it turns out I heard that wrong, too), were never able to identify it. Davin and I …
Oh how I dread this time of year. It’s cold. So cold. I am a wimp. The days are growing shorter, and darker. My hands are like ice cubes almost all of the time. The days of fresh tomatoes and basil are coming to an end. Sweaters, warm socks, and months of dust are coming …
The other day I posted about a datura that wasn’t a datura that I thought had been given the patois name “Agouti Umbrella,” but is not in fact the “Agouti Umbrella” even though it certainly looks like it could be one. The fern-like moss shown in the above photo is the real “Agouti Umbrella” aka …